This past week, Q-line asked: If plans for a mass-transit line between downtown Los Angeles and Santa Monica go forward, what shape should they take?
Here are your responses: ✆ “One must consider that a subway or monorail mass-transit system only travels in two directions, either east to west or north to south, back and forth. A mass transit system from Los Angeles to Santa Monica would create many negative long-lasting construction and commuter problems. One being the fact that commuters would still have to use other forms of transportation to get to the passenger pick-up depot. The construction of the monorail would mean homes would have to be removed from its path. Those homes near the rail would lose value. The construction of a subway tunnel would be a horrible ordeal due to the underground, water-soaked soil below all of west Los Angeles and Santa Monica. This water-soaked soil will cause cave-ins as it did in Hollywood. It will also cause cracked foundations in homes left near the tunnel. After this mass-transit system is completed it will be known as going from no place to nowhere.” ✆ “If (Rep. Henry) Waxman wants a subway, then its got to be a crooked, multi-billion dollar money scam. Walt Disney was right on with his monorail and so too is Herb Katz. They can be semi-mobile and placed above our existing freeways, they can be inexpensive and easily repaired. An underground subway is extremely expensive and dangerous because of earthquakes, gas leaks, floods or terrorists.” ✆ “The city of Santa Monica is doing the wrong thing by giving these city employees an increase in pay. They don’t deserve it since they make enough right now. I see city employees sitting around just talking and eating, doing anything but working. I work very hard to pay my taxes, not to give it away to these inefficient people so that money can be used for the subway line that will go from downtown to the beach which is very important.” ✆ “The best way forward for the mass-transit line between Los Angeles and Santa Monica should be to extend the Red Line subway all the way to Santa Monica to Ocean Avenue. The City Council should ask Gov. Schwarzenegger to cut out a chunk of his 250 billion dollar bond proposal to fund the Red Line subway. Currently he has nothing in it for mass-transit. The City Council should also push forward to have the monorail to go all the way to Santa Monica without making the Triangle detour around Culver City.” ✆ “I think between a subway or monorail, the subway would have more value to it. We have to remember that we are living in earthquake country. If the monorail was built and an earthquake came along, it would be disastrous. We need to remember what happened to the Santa Monica freeway when the Northridge earthquake hit, it collapsed. If the subway were built, it would be safer. During the San Francisco earthquake, the only thing running was the subway system. The MTA has said that the safest place is a subway during an earthquake.” ✆ “Why does everything have to come to Santa Monica? Why can’t the mass-transit system go to Venice or Culver City? How do we benefit by having more people infesting Santa Monica by either monorail or subway. We want fewer people here, not more. Why aren’t our ‘elected leaders’ looking at ways to decrease the population in California, in Los Angeles County, in Santa Monica. People who write to the Daily Press about mass-transit have vested interests in subways, buses, monorails. It seems that City Council members become consultants for certain interests or work for the school district. How about working for the citizens of Santa Monica. Fewer people, fewer five-story buildings, less traffic, less businesses. Lets have a simpler, better life.” ✆ “The new mass-transit line between Los Angeles and Santa Monica should go one way only, and that is from Santa Monica to Los Angeles. Pam O’Conner should be the first person to get on that line and leave Santa Monica, not to return.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 14, 2006. Read the original PDF.